UN condemns Ukraine's return of asylum seekers

The United Nations said yesterday that it was appalled by Ukraine's decision to send 11 Uzbek asylum seekers, who fled the troubled central Asian country after the Andijan massacre, back to Uzbekistan, in an apparent breach of international law.

The 11 men fled Uzbekistan after troops fired on a peaceful demonstration on May 13 last year, killing up to 500 people. The protest was sparked by a violent jail break, which the Uzbek government said was orchestrated by Islamic extremists.

The Ukrainian security services arrested the 11 men this month in two cities in the southern region of Crimea during an operation against illegal immigration, the Unian news agency reported on Wednesday.

Pirkko Kourula, director of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' European bureau, said in a statement: "We deplore this action, which the authorities carried out in contravention of their international obligations."

The UNHCR said that nine of the men had applied for asylum and two had said they intended to do so. They had been held at a detention facility in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, when the authorities received a request from Uzbekistan for their extradition.

The UNHCR said the decision to extradite came after it had appealed twice to the Ukrainian authorities not to send the men back until their asylum applications had been heard, and added that they had had a right to appeal.

It said the Ukrainian decision appeared to violate the 1951 UN refugee convention and Ukrainian law. Because the men almost certainly face torture in Uzbekistan, the UNHCR said that the extradition also contravened the UN convention against torture.

The US state department says that the Uzbek police routinely use torture.

The Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, was elected on a platform in which he pledged to put human rights at the centre of the country's political and economic development.

Analysts attribute his victory in the lengthy electoral crisis of November 2004, known as the orange revolution, to his party representing a break from the corrupt post-Soviet norms, under which such extraditions would be considered commonplace.